In a recent BBC World Service Report, technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones describes technology tycoon and maverick entrepreneur Elon Musk as “both bonkers and brilliant, the most visionary technology leader I have encountered in 20 years of interviewing many of the leading figures in the industry.”
Now, this is wholly understandable when one considers that there has always been a fine line dividing madness and genius. Indeed, those who are usually hailed as visionary are more often than not people who see things the rest of us have difficulty imagining. Hence, their vision is not always immediately embraced and one tends to regard them as crazy, unconventional or exotic – sometimes all of the foregoing – dreamers. The fact is these are people whose imagination and capacity for thought allow them a glimpse of future possibilities – an alternative reality, if you will – the majority of us can hardly conceive of, let alone believe possible.
So, with the New Year barely two weeks old and today being the birth anniversary of a certain great man who once famously had a dream, we crave our readers’ indulgence as we go beyond New Year’s resolutions and wish lists, and dare to dream once again, in this year of the 50th anniversary of our Independence, of the Guyana we would like to see and, more importantly, bequeath to our children and our children’s children.
Of course, it was just last Monday when, in a letter to the editor (‘What do the next 50 years hold?’), that indefatigable chronicler of our collective condition, GHK Lall, essayed his own projections for the next half-century. In so doing, he quite logically offered a typically frank and incisive diagnosis of the principal ills plaguing our country and proffered his own suggestions.
Mr Lall writes of social cohesion and national unity; race, tribe and politics, and all that spreads the poison of fear and hatred; the need for “sacrifice” and a “comprehensive, continuous dedication to a cause, a calling, a shared vision”; and the desire for “the peace and stability and progress of national harmony”.
Unfortunately, Mr Lall appears to be pessimistic about our future prospects, given the limitations imposed by our history, the reality of our political culture; our institutional weaknesses; our “now classic Guyanese tradition of ‘hand wash hand’”; and, perhaps most crucially of all, our education system and its failure to promote critical thinking.
But Mr Lall has been a regular correspondent for years now and he continues to write. He himself has returned from North America to live in Guyana to try to make a contribution, as a teacher, a secular preacher and the voice that pricks the bubble of self-suffocating egotism and of our conscience. It is hard to imagine that he does so because he derives a perverse, masochistic pleasure from highlighting our collective deficiencies.
Mr Lall continues to wield his pen much as a surgeon uses his scalpel, to peel away the outer layer, to expose the various cankers afflicting our body politic, our society and our culture, in the hope that, somehow, we might find a way to excise them. One suspects, therefore, that he still harbours some hope for the future and that, in his own way, he is seeking to provoke us to confront the truth together and to take corrective action before it really is too late.
Martin Luther King Jr had a dream of a post-racial America. This is still a work in progress and America is still a deeply divided nation; but, at least, America was able to elect Barack Obama as president in 2008 and 2012, perhaps the ultimate embodiment of Dr King’s dream that African-Americans “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.
Can we not dream then of a country where we might all live in harmony with each other? Dare we not dream of better days ahead, not just this year but for years to come? Can we not muster the optimism and fortitude to envision a thriving, progressive society, with functioning infrastructure and the trappings of modernity, with an enabling environment and opportunities for all, and with the moral values to sustain the realisation of the vision?
We have begun to see in the space of a few months how Georgetown can be cleaned up and revitalised. A lot more work obviously remains to be done; but in harking back to the glory days of the ‘Garden City’ we have glimpsed the future. We just need to find the commitment, summon the passion and drive, and apply our creativity and intellect to live the dream, to establish our alternative reality.
We don’t have to turn as far as Mr Musk for inspiration. To borrow from Black Stalin, “We could make it if we try… just a little harder.” Bonkers? Not really. Difficult? Definitely. But we must dare to dream.
